One of captain Morley’s soft spots is exotic animals. As such, he keeps a small menagerie aboard The Chaste Magpie. One of his most prized specimen is Bil the radipus – a curiosity he picked up on the former penal colony of Anatinus Prime.

Radipus Bil – cute, cuddly and horribly wrong

The radipus (or RadiathorhynkhosParadoxus) is a lethal but docile creature. A fully grown specimen can fire radioactive blasts from its snout, but will normally only do so if threatened. Their eggs, however, are highly explosive and will detonate if touched by anything not emitting the radiation signature of its mother. Fried radipus egg is amongst the most exclusive meals you can have in the sector.

Have at ’em lad!

The model is an old platypus model from (now sadly defunct) Mega Miniatures. I’ve had it for yonks but with my current interest in Pulp Alley I have actual need of little, unassuming models to fill the inevitable 1 point follower gap in the standard league of leader, sidekick and three allies.

Speaking of followers – I have enabled a few features with a new plugin (thank you Jetpack – everybody should run it if they have a standalone WordPress installation). You can now either follow the blog and receive email notifications whenever I post new content – or you can subscribe to comment threads. So far, I have two followers so please – don’t be shy! Kudos to headhead and cheetor for being the first two.

Also, speaking of platipii – check out Random Platypus. It’s to Frothers like Zero is to Coke or Max is to Pepsi. Only less vile tasting.

The best part of painting this silly little thing is I had to do some research. Here are a few examples of the great things you can find if you google for “space platypus”.

From deviantART

More deviantART – now with udder!

And some general platypus propaganda – just because it’s rather great!

And for the cute overload fan in you – shar pei with beaks!

I suspect more Spacelords in a near future – but before that I’ll do more of the “completely different” thing.